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Monday, November 21, 2016

Cross Ange was such a guilty pleasure: it featured gratuitous amounts of fan service, glorified and then trampled on the female form, had copious amounts of mecha on mecha action as well as characters and mecha designs that bore more than a passing similarity to a small anime series called Gundam Seed. Heck, they even included the Freedom's shield and beam rifle in one of the sequences!That being said, Cross Ange is its own animal. While it used a rather common plot point, it manages to blend heavy issues into a cohesive narrative after the paper-thin first few episodes. The twist that the Norma were killing fellow Norma who had turned into dragons was pretty hard-hitting for some, and many of us tuned in each year to find out what will happen to Ange and Kira Yamato Tusk. The series featured some interesting mecha designs in the form of the Paramails, variable mecha units that the characters use to battle dragons. These are sleek, lethal robots that are able to shift between a high-speed flight mode and a combat humanoid mode, and are armed with a veritable plethora of standard mecha weaponry. The Vilkiss is the lead mecha used by the protagonist Ange, but Salamadinay's En-Ryu-Go made it into my collection.On first look, you can tell that En-Ryu-Go is edgey as hell. Spikes and sharp angles dominate the entire frame, giving it a ruthless visage. Armed rather simply with a long beam rifle with affixed sword, an extensible arm blade and a small arm cannon, En-Ryu-Go clearly focuses on close-range melees, with protrusions and extensions all over the slim frame able to inflict harm on targets unfortunate enough to be within its grasp.As a Robot Damashii, articulation is a given, although I would have liked for the legs to be able to spread apart more in order to strike edgier poses. The length of its rifle can also be too much for the skinny arms, but most of the time, it is able to hold the rifle up without support from the other hand.Overall, if you're looking for a Cross Ange mecha to add to your collection, why not start with the En-Ryu-Go?Gallery